Inspector Javert's Very Bad Day
by AmZ
Summary: Javert in Wonderland, for a very arbitrary definition of Wonderland. Takes literally the phrase 'He had but little skull.' Part of the "You Know Nothing of Javert" story arc.
1. Confusion

Author's Very Short Note: Yes, I do realize that the novel Javert would probably not think or behave like that. Yes, I do remember the line about whores and countesses. No, I will not change the story because of it.

Being that this is happening in my AU world, Javert has a head injury – my way of taking literally the words "He had but very little skull."

* * *

It's been a good ten minutes since our entire jolly company had piled in – lieutenants Rocher and Amiot, the whore, and myself. I had been sitting at my desk the whole time, staring at the stamped sheet of paper lying in front of me, and hoping to God that my eyes did not make obvious to everyone in the room the absolute chaos inside my head.

My kettle, as my dear departed mother was fond of saying, was not boiling today. No, not boiling at all. Instead of deliberating the length of detention appropriate for the apprehended woman, my mind wandered all over the place.

The weather has really been depressingly lousy these past couple of days, I mused.

That rusty latch on the front door of the station ought really to be replaced, I thought.

And then: sergeant Amiot has been smoking too much, and none of it the good stuff. His uniform stinks to high heavens. There he stands by the stove, a good seven feet away, and I can smell him like nothing doing. I can only pity his laundress.

To banish torpor from my skull, I decided to let appearances slide for a moment and shook my head hard, like a dog getting out of water. I shouldn't have done that.

When the yellow zigzags and purple splotches finally stopped dancing the cotillion behind my eyelids, I thought: My God, how I want this shift to be over! No more rowdy whores, public house brawls, leaking gutters, stolen chickens, run-over dogs, stubborn mules obstructing the thoroughfare – enough! I haven't seen my bed in eighteen hours. Wait, hold on, no, it was eighteen at dinnertime. It's twenty-one now. Twenty-one hours spent alternately on my feet and on my arse. The devil take this job.

The memory of the last shift-and-half immediately made tighten the invisible vise gripping my temples. Blood pounded angrily against the wall of pain in my head. But the whore in the corner wasn't going anywhere, and neither was the report on her misbehavior. I ground my teeth together, which produced a disgusting sound and an even more disgusting sensation, forced myself to pick up the goddamn pen, dipped it into the goddamn inkwell and put the writing end of it to paper. There was no more time to ruminate; I had to get this bloody report over with.

I had squeezed literally four words out when my thoughts once again scattered like spooked cockroaches. It was only the start of my first sentence and I was already hopelessly stuck. I had lost a word, a very important one. At least I assumed it must have been important, for I had no idea how to go one writing without it.

"Apprehended, a woman of the" read the sentence. Woman of the what? Woman of that place. Of that place with buildings and roads. That place; the place where she lives, where I live, where my two lieutenants live, where the entirety of the bloody populace lives! What is it called, god damn it!

Logically, I understood that the word I lost must have been a very simple one. But no matter how simple, at that particular moment when I needed it most, it was suddenly nowhere to be found. It absconded, and what was even worse it took all of its synonyms along. I was left with verbal material that was just on this side of useful: "building," "street," "crossroads," "thoroughfare."

And then even those words began disappearing. They slipped through the cracks in my concentration like a handful of water escaping through the fingers. Clutch your hand as tight as you want - you will still soon be left with an empty palm.

Within seconds most of my French vocabulary was gone. If someone had chosen to ask me just then, "Say, Inspector, what is that feathery thing you are holding?" not only would I not have been able to answer that it's a pen, but I would probably have looked around to see whom he was addressing. "Inspector"? What sort of animal is that and how does one dress it for dinner?

The fire was burning hot in the stove, but I was pouring cold sweat under my greatcoat. Stay calm; stay calm. Don't panic, I ordered myself.

As my logos fled the premises, I was abandoned to purely sensory contemplation. Particularly engrossing were the sounds around me. Drops of pine sap hissed, crackled and spat in the stove. Clumps of muddy, half-melted snow squelched under the boots of the gendarmes as they shifted their impatient weight from foot to foot. The girl crouching in the corner breathed in uneven, sonorous gasps. Out on the town square, cab drivers cursed, horses neighed, whips whistled, hooves clopped, and carriage wheels rattled. Under the station window, spectators guffawed and chattered, and someone's breath was fogging up the glass from the outside and rubbing it with an insistent sleeve in an effort to get a better look at the goings-on indoors.

When the viscous fog cleared somewhat from my head, I looked down and realized that while I pondered the visual and acoustical nuances of my milieu, the pen, which I had been pressing to the sheet this whole time, had anointed my future report with a sizeable blot. I crumpled the sticky sheet and patted down my pockets for another one. Determined to use this moment of clarity wisely, I once again put the pen to paper and quickly scribbled the date, place, name of the arresting officer and detainee, observed offense and other preliminaries.

Now somewhat more collected, I began to ponder the possible outcomes of this arrest. Most of them were deplorable. The last thing I needed was a consumptive whore spitting up the floors and walls in one of my cells. A couple of days of hacking all over the place, I thought, and that's it, the cell is a sepulcher for the next man placed there. I suddenly recalled the unhappy but nevertheless perpetually smiling face of a young red-headed medical I used to see around Isaac back when he was still engaged at the Hotel Dieu. The fellow used to "walk" two fingers up his chest, all the way from the sternum to the gullet, and then mimic consumptive hacking. "The tubercles, love," he told didactically to anyone caring to hear, "they are mi-gra-to-ry. Nothing to be done about it, except that the entire nation keep its mouth shut. And we are a race of chatterers – so be sure to pass on the bad news!"

Suddenly a small explosion went off in my head. The hospital, that's where she needs to be! She can't have more than a couple of weeks left in her - what's stopping me?

The death-rattle in the girl's bony chest was so loud, I was sure I could hear it all the way across the room. (Death-rattle, that is to say, the râles. That would be Laennec's morbid little joke on the rest of us. It **takes** a medical.) In her case, I'd surmise the gurgling râles, coupled with amphoric breathing and increased vocal resonance, although naturally this was impossible to conclude with certainty without a stethoscope or at least immediate auscultation. But there were other signs aplenty: general emaciation, yellow-gray expectoration tinged with red on a rag clutched in her hand, paleness coupled with a bright, hectic flush of cheek. A textbook case of late stage chronic phthisis. Also malnourishment, and on top of that unnecessary nervous excitation brought on by alcohol and violence. She should have been off the streets weeks ago. That's what happens when they disobey the law and do not submit to the mandatory medical check-ups.

Well, there's nothing to be done now except wait for nature to take its course. And since that must be the case, I decided, it might as well take its course with her laid out on a proper bed instead of a two-inch thick regulation straw mattress. She won't occupy it for long, that bed. No injury to the hospital except insult to the hospital sisters. But that is something I can live with. I dislike the sisters.

Right, I calculated, here is how it's going to play out. Nominally, she gets six months' sentence, suspended until health permits transport to the assizes at Arras. Until then, the sentence is substituted with mandatory hospital bed stay. That works out nicely all around: she gets a bed and some peace and quiet; the streets count one whore less; and on paper at least, the perpetrator is detained by the law for an appropriate amount of time. Justice is served on every front and I sleep easier knowing that she won't be attacking or infecting anyone else. Except maybe the sisters. But that's what they're there for. Everyone benefits, show's over, the curtains are drawn.

Perfect. Now only to write it up and put a signature to it.


	2. Apprehension

Done.

I picked up the paper, waved it around to make the ink dry quicker and folded it into three. Now to send a man to the hospital with the news and another one to escort the petticoat to a cell. I took another look at the woman wheezing on the floor in the corner. Even though she was sitting flush against the wall, her head was swaying slightly, as if she were about to lose consciousness. I recognized the look. No, one man wouldn't do, I thought.

I signed for Amiot to approach, handed him the report and said:

"Take three men and conduct this creature to jail."

Or carry her there, whichever presents the occasion.

The woman suddenly started and came alive, fixing a stare on Amiot stuffing the paper into his trouser pocket. Her eyes were wide and oily, as if she'd been indulging in opium as well as alcohol. Her dress was all-but falling off her shoulders, but she didn't even move to make herself decent. Disgust momentarily overcame whatever pity I had for her. She could keep herself proper at least as a common courtesy. The last thing I need now is one of my lieutenants getting randy. I need that even less than a consumptive whore in my cells. At least she has an excuse for being consumptive, whereas there's no excuse for bad taste.

"You are to have six months of it," I told her as dryly as I could manage. And added silently, However much of it you manage to survive.

"Six months! six months of prison!" she exclaimed. "Six months in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe the Thenardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?"

At the instant when she pronounced the word Cosette, I was seized with a powerful feeling of deja vu. Wait a minute, I thought. Am I going to have to go through all this again? Right then I was dead certain that this exact scene had played out earlier – earlier in the month, earlier in the year, earlier in my lifetime - not once but multiple times, and that each time it had ended the same way. The thought made me furious.

"You should have considered that before attacking people, you worthless hag," I said. "You're lucky I bothered with the arrest at all and didn't just break your neck on the spot."

Wait. What?

The fog was back, and it had brought reinforcements. Something akin to civil war was breaking out in my head. Within the space of a couple of seconds, my brain had split up into warring camps: emotion would not communicate with reason, reason refused to traffic with logic, logic divorced from language, and language once again abandoned its post altogether. While I tried to make sense of what was happening, emotion charged ahead, secured control, and severed all lines of communication to the other sectors.

I became awash in all-consuming and utterly absurd delight at seeing the detained woman in such distress.

The reasonable parts of my brain recognized that I was not the real author of this feeling, but they could neither subdue it nor relate this fact to the rest of my consciousness. I was locked in my all-consuming emotion like a paralytic is locked in his recalcitrant body.

"Child! Don't be talking to me about your child! As if having a bastard made one exempt from obeying the law! You are twice a whore for spreading your legs for the first-comer! Well, so be it! an example will be made here to the rest of your disgraceful kind! Your days of being mollycoddled by soft-hearted officials are over: when you disturb public order, you get prison time, and that's that!"

My God, what is this nonsense I'm talking!

"And let this be a lesson to the rest of your despicable kind: yes, I am bound by law to let you ply your vile trade, but by God, when I catch a hold of you for something, expect no pity! No, I will not cast the first stone, but give me half a chance and I will throw the book at you, and then you'll wish I threw stones instead!"

Unable to listen to myself any longer, I pressed my teeth together with enough force to chip the enamel. At that moment I suddenly realized that my mouth had been shut ever since I told her she was to serve six months. I had not said a word this whole time.

Oblivious to the maelstrom of confusion raging inside my skull, the woman - Fantine, she was called Fantine, I remembered - started weeping and crawled towards my desk on her knees. The sight of her dragging her knees on the floor made my stomach lurch, and the insane, disgusting triumph coursing through me instantly metamorphosed into white-hot fury. My veins circulated it like poison. It dissolved my bones like acid. It flowed between my teeth like heaved up bile. Even my skin itched and burned with it.

Onward, she crawled, wiping the floor with her torn silk dress, which was now little more than a sopping filthy rag. Her clasped hands reached out pleadingly towards me; her eyes overflowed with tears. Frozen and furious, I watched her and understood with horror that if she would come close enough to me to touch my clothes, I might just kick her in the head.

Abruptly, the world swirled around me. I managed to stay upright only because the axis of its rotation went precisely through the top of my head. The vise that had been pressing against my temples all morning was all-but crushing my skull. The flame of the candle on the table turned crimson and danced off into a black void. I felt myself losing consciousness and desperately held onto the back of my chair.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. Whatever it was that had grabbed onto me earlier had unclenched its talons. I almost staggered forward with relief as I was set free. This must be how a villager feels, I thought, after losing a tug of war with an ox during a country fair: the body is grateful beyond words for the loss of horrible strain, but the mind is already registering that you are laying face down in a fetid puddle, that your mouth is full of muck, and that everyone in the village is looking at you and laughing themselves to pieces.

In my case, the puddle was metaphorical but no less deep for it. I found myself standing at my desk and clutching the back of my chair so hard that the muscles of my left arm were cramping up all the way to my shoulder. My ears were ringing; my heart thrashed in my chest like a bird; beads of slimy sweat tickled the sides of my face.

Amiot and Rocher were frowning to each other and signing towards me with scared, rounded eyes. The woman was now kneeling at my feet – I had no memories of her getting there – grasping at my coat and looking up into my face. Her eyes were no longer lifeless and glazed over, but sharp and anxious: the eyes of a mother. She must have sensed that something had just gone wrong in our little scene. For a couple of seconds we looked into each other's eyes as I desperately tried to recall who she was and why I was sentencing her to six months in prison.

The flood of violent emotions had washed my brain clean of every memory of this even now transpiring event. How long was I gone? I wondered. I could vaguely recall watching her crawl towards me and speak. I remembered none of the words, only the image of her lips moving and the tear streaks on her red, puffy face. What did she say to me? Did I say anything back? Judging by their faces, I had been silent the whole time. Was it then my turn to deliver lines?

They waited: three men and one woman. Four pairs of eyes watching me.

"Come!" I said, mentally cringing at my painfully overdone aplomb. "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished?"

Speak now, girl, or forever hold your peace. I missed your monologue.

No, nothing but hunched over shoulders and downcast eyes. I took the third second of silence to be my cue.

"You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could do nothing more."

"Mercy," she murmured as she sank even lower to the floor.

Unable to watch her any more, I turned my back. There will be no mercy, mademoiselle. I am not equipped to dispense it, and neither is the Eternal Father, I would bet. Else how could he tolerate such things as prostitution and invent such things as epilepsy?


	3. Intrusion

"One moment, if you please."

Four pairs of eyes. Not three.

The familiar brogue made my subsiding nausea flair up once again, threatening to turn me inside out.

I reached for my hat. I had not wrapped my head today, and the thought of treating His Very Magisterial Mayorness to the sight of my deformed dome was a warm one.

""Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," I said gleefully, raising an awkward salute to the huge dent in my skull. His eyes followed the motion and quickly looked away. I felt slightly better.

Upon hearing me speak, the woman suddenly tore out of the grasp of my two lieutenants, crossed the room in several large strides and, looking old Madeleine directly in the eye, hissed at him:

"Ah! so it is you who are 'Mister Mayor!'"

And she burst into hysterical laughter. Before I could do anything or say anything, she tilted her head up and did something unthinkable: hawked a massive loogie right into Madeleine's agrestic mug.

Two conflicting thoughts raced through my head: "Now you're really in for it, lassie" and "Atta girl, go get him!"

The government agent in me was appropriately horrified: a woman of the town (town! That's the word I was looking for earlier!) had spat into a magistrate's face (nice phthisic spit too, a solid gob of expectoration, probably swarming with little tubercles). Nasty bold girl! Tsk tsk.

But on the other hand, that mayor of ours...

I've seen enough dodgy characters over the five years that I've worked with the Parisian Security Brigade, but this Mayor somehow trumps them all in my head. Everything about him bothers me.

His piety bothers me. Maybe it's because of all those letters Francois has been sending me about how Delavau and his Jesuits have been botching things up in Paris, but lately I've developed a real grudge against church-goers. I mean the really pious ones, the ones that attend low mass every day at blue o'clock in the morning and beat their breasts to their confessors several times a week. Ones like this mayor of ours. That man spends so much time in church that he might as well get a cot installed for himself there. No doubt it was this fashionable piety that got him his cushy job and his Legion of Honor cross. I don't respect hypocrites, especially ones that use their so-called religion to angle for honors.

His indiscriminate openness and friendliness bother me. On this subject, I admit, I am more sensitive and suspicious than most. I've known a grand total of two people in my life that treated me with honesty and kindness because of their innate goodness of heart. The odds that he is the third are slim. Most likely he is just politicking. And while I realize that politicians are a species necessary to our civilized society, that understanding doesn't preclude me from distrusting their motives.

But it's the physical signs that bother me the most.

That sunburned mug of his, for instance. I know that suntan. Oh, people say it's just because he's been lived a laborer's life and passed his days outdoors, but those people haven't spent eighteen years hanging around the Toulon galleys. I have. I've seen this kind of suntan before. Pardieu, I've had this kind of suntan before! I still have it – even the Russian snows had not bleached my mug clean of it. This is prime cut southern seaside tan. It's a special sort of color – like having your face rubbed with the juice of walnut leaves.

And that right leg of his, the one he drags slightly. Well - used to drag when I first met him in 1820 - he doesn't do it nearly so much anymore. I've met dozens of men with that exact infirmity, all of them old hands at Toulon or Brest. It's the chains that do it. A fellow goes in for his five to ten years, tries to escape and gets four added on top of it and spends those four years in double chains as befits a "returned horse." By the time he is finally released, he's so used to dragging his right leg behind him that he keeps on doing so even when the chains are gone. And if you take a good close look at his calves and thighs, you'll mark the uneven muscle development as plain as daylight. (Isaac and I had figured this out during a case of identity fraud that took place back when émigrés were still returning en masse and there was a sea of confusion about who was who.)

A dozens of other trifles about his person scratch at my attention. He is unusualy strong; I've met very few people who could lift a horse and he does it with remarkably little effort. In and of itself, this wouldn't be so suspicious, but I have bad memories connected to a certain glum and nasty galley-slave who was so strong that he became famous for his ability to serve as a jackscrew. Our Madeleine is a crack shot – and that fellow I mentioned had been convicted of the offenses of breaking and entering, theft and poaching. And then there's the fact that our Madeleine appeared in Montrieul, I've been told, around 1815, which just happens to be the year when my unfriendly Jackscrew was released on parole, which he promptly broke.

That is really what I find most curious and most suspicious about our Mister Mayor. He has no past. There is literally not a scrap of paper to be found in the municipal archives documenting who he is, where he comes from, his pedigree or occupation – there is absolutely nothing. I was not present when he first arrived into town, but what I've gleaned about his entry does not set my mind at ease. The captain of the gendarmerie had subjected me on numerous occasions to the recount of how a stranger had rescued his (the captain's) two children from a blaze that had broken out at the town-hall. Who was that man? He didn't know. Where did he come from? He had no idea. But as can be expected after such an incident, he didn't care. Henceforth Madeleine (so the stranger called himself) resided in Montreuil with the air of an honest mechanic and citizen. Oh, I salute him for braving a fire to rescue children; it was a courageous action, no two ways about it. But papers are papers. In my experience, people who lack them usually lack them for shady reasons: for instance, the name in their previous documents no longer suited their circumstances, or the passport had been of a wrong color. The Security Brigade taught me to distrust people who are fond of changing their name. (Hell, if I were not me, I'd be terribly suspicious of my own name. What sort of a name is "Javert" anyway? A made-up one, a child can see that. But were I not me and were I to ask myself about my moniker, I'd be able to give myself – not my named self, my other self, the self that's we're taking to be someone other than me – an adequate explanation of its origins and a number of perfectly sound reasons why I made it my official appellation. And then I'd be satisfied. The other me, I mean. See, it's all perfectly simple.)

I know I'm probably going overboard in being suspicious, but suspicion is my bread. The wolf is fed by his legs, as the Russians say, and I would add that he is fed by his nose as well. And my nose had always been unhappy with Madeleine's odor.

So you can imagine my confusion and alarm when M. Madeleine, as calm as the open sea, wiped his face and said:

"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."


	4. Incursion

I felt that I was on the verge of going mad. Word and thought failed me equally. However, an idea did cross my mind that perhaps I had already passed out and was now sprawled out on the floor and seeing all this insanity in a fit-induced nightmare.

This new stupor spell lasted only about half a second, and then every gear in my brain immediately doubled its rotation rate. So, you want this woman set at liberty, Monsieur Mayor, I thought feverishly, desperately trying to maintain an impassive facade. She had spit in your face – she obviously hates your guts – what in God's name could be your stock in her freedom? Are you intimately involved with this woman, Monsieur Mayor? Does this perhaps-perchance have something to do with that child she was blathering about?

Blathering about. Blathering. About. She blathered. About. About?

What about?

Oh, but this is intolerable, I thought as I watched the candle flames dance away from me for the second time that evening. This time they did not return.

The world faded to a dull gray. Figure blended with background. I could no longer distinguish between a piece of furniture and the wallpaper pattern. All sounds melted together into a single low-pitched hum vibrating somewhere in the back of my aching skull.

The woman was speaking again, but I could no longer discern any meaning in her babble; my focus was elsewhere. It was just as I had feared: the thawed slush had gotten into my powder after all. While I pondered whether or not it was even worth the effort to attempt reloading with this batch, I heard rifle reports and screams from the southern edge of the marsh where Bonaventure and his team of six had been sitting knee-deep in muck all morning long with the intention to ambush the Cossacks. Instantly I heard the cornet calling the cavalry together. Gun still unloaded, I set running towards the growing clouds of powder smoke, thinking that even though Bonaventure (_in pace requiescat) _was a bit thick in the head, his stupidity may have bought me a few crucial minutes.

On sheer instinct I dashed across the field towards the spare, sickly birches that grew in a thin crescent below our camp; there was a decent vantage point to be had right on the edge of the growth where the hillock sloped sharply off into a deep ravine. Blue clouds were growing thick all around me, but the sun still shone through the smoke like a copper coin. I was almost there when the ground under my feet bucked and threw me off its back like a bad-tempered colt.

/Sssh. It's all right now. I'm here./

The voice made my heart drop into my britches.

/It's alright, love. You're in bed, we've had a bit of a scare, but it's all right now./

Scare?

/You were with someone. You got overexcited. Nothing serious./

The voice died down and I felt a gentle but firm pressure on my wrist.

/Just lay back and relax. I'll be right back with some water./

No! No! No no no, man, come back!

/You mustn't exert yourself./

Two strong hands gripped my shoulders and pressed me into the cot with the same firm gentleness as before.

/ Eugene is watching over you. I will be right back. Count backwards from tventy for me./

Zwanzig. Neunzehn. Ach...

For a few moments there was only darkness and salt – I must have bitten my cheek landing. I rolled over onto my stomach and attempted to stand up. There was no pain anywhere, but my ears were ringing. Using my hands to prop myself up, I lifted myself enough to survey my surroundings. The blast appeared to have blown me straight into the ravine. Two other fellows had been blown therein with me: one of them lay neatly against the dirt slope, gurgling through a massive torrent of blood erupting from his torn throat, and the other was curling his body into a tighter and tighter ball in an attempt to keep the intestines from falling out of his gut.

"Where to... Where to...?" he kept mumbling, as if waiting for an attack order to be signaled. "Where to...?"

Straight up now, I thought and slowly got back onto my feet. My balance was not perfect, but that did not matter. I was close.

/Goodness, are you up again? Lay down immediately. That's an order/

And then, instead of crisp frozen dirt under my boots, there were smooth cool floorboards under my bare feet. There was also a window open right next to me; a fresh jasmine-scented breeze was cooling my bare chest. Confused, I reached out to touch the murky surface of the glass when there came footsteps behind me, and Isaac said with his usual resignation:

"Oh, you insufferable lout..."

I was gripped, turned round and shepherded back to the cot, where I had a sheet thrown over me and my hair pulled back from where it got pinched between the boards; my right arm was pressed everywhere and bent at the elbow, and then the same done to my right leg and knee. Through it all, he kept talking, grumbling, berating me for being a naughty patient without any regard for the perilous nature of my condition, and a lot of other nonsense that I'd been hearing from him on weekly basis for the past three years. Yes, it's been that long. I've been counting. You've been with me for that long, Isaac, you silly bastard, you glutton for punishment, God knows...

"Sssh. No more mumbling." A moist compress was laid out across my forehead. "Have you counted back from tventy for me yet?"

I felt my throat tighten. "No," I said. My voice sounded like I'd been screaming for hours. Perhaps I had.

"Then do so," he murmured. "Silently. Focus on the numbers and let everything else flow out of your mind. Relax your body."

Achtzehn. Siebzehn. Sechzehn.

Something sharp pricked my right index finger. It was so unexpected that I couldn't stop myself from wincing.

"Good. Very good. Keep counting."

I counted. There were three of them guarding that infernal cannon. Not one, not two, as I'd hoped (one of them for one of us – for symmetry), but three. Although one of them was clearly not going to present any significant obstacle: he was a short, big-headed lad who couldn't have been more than fifteen or so. Probably an impressed serf. The other two were adult, but also not the most well-fed of individuals. None of them inspired much fear, but the fact of their trinity did inspire caution. Three flimsy men are one thing, but these three flimsy men all had sharp bayonets. Even if I got two of them quickly, there was a damn good chance the third one was going to stick me on the rebound. I was going to need help.

/Ssh, ssh... Don't be frightened, love. It's all just a nasty dream. You will wake soon and all this will be forgotten. Just relax and let yourself wake up./

I shook my head to have the strange voice clear out. It vanished, but another took its place almost immediately: a muffled female one. Something was said about mischief and silk, then about snow and walking, and then it was gone again. I rebuked myself for going mad at such an inopportune moment and looked around, thinking. It was becoming difficult to discern anything in the thickening smoke, but luck was with me. The answer lay about a two hundred paces away, frothing at the mouth and kicking the air like a fiend.


	5. Delusion

In response to some questions about the woman: Recall where Javert really is and who is really around him.

* * *

The plan practically formed itself. I took a calming breath and set off towards the fallen rider, bending as low as I could to avoid getting hit by flying mortar fragments. 

It was entirely unclear what their artillerists were thinking. There was no consolidated infantry within easily two hundred feet of the ravine – most of them were on the opposite side of the marsh - and yet the shelling was so intense that my little hill was beginning to resemble a well-ploughed field. Another few hours and it would be entirely leveled.

Seventy or eighty paces to the fallen Cossack. Forget about the rifle, the backpack, the freezing cold, the soggy clothes and the water-logged boots. Ignore the nauseating high-pitched whine of bullets and the bombs bursting all around you. Just run.

"_If that is not a horror, what is_?" suddenly came the weepy female voice again out of nowhere.

I gave up trying to reassure myself. If I was to go mad, I decided, there were far less suitable places for it than a battlefield.

"A horror, yes, I concur in full," I panted, looping around tufts of dry rushes like a demented hare. "But what is to be done about it?"

"..._Work honestly..._" moaned the invisible girl.

"I fully intend to!" exclaimed I, growing irritated at her indignant tone.

Perhaps I ought to pray, I thought. Maybe then she'll leave me alone. Neither the Pater nor the Ave seemed appropriate for the occasion, so I decided to improvise an orison of my own.

"Our Father, who art in heaven," I thought, shielding my head instinctively against yet another fragment whizzing overhead, "all I need from you is about five minutes. Can I have that much, Father? After that, thy will be done. But I really need those five minutes. Preferably without that ghostly broad talking my ears off. Amen."

The smoke was becoming so thick that I could barely distinguish the rider and the horse anymore. There was no longer any way to orient oneself. Where was up? where was down? Where was East? where was West? I felt as if I was being carried downstream through a boiling river. All I could do was trust my legs to remember both the direction and the distance for me.

Fifteen more paces. Twelve. Watch out for that ditch. Nine

/In German, Sashuta, count back in German. Concentrate. You're doing well./

Neun. Acht. Sieben.

The Cossack was dead. His back appeared to have been broken when his mount collapsed to the ground. The horse was alive and unharmed but in panic, foaming and kicking and neighing pathetically. I approached the fallen rider from the back and dropped to the ground, struggling to catch my breath.

Suddenly the Cossack cracked open one crusty eye and looked me right in the face. I was so taken aback that I did something utterly silly: I grinned at him like a village idiot.

"Uuuh, besovskoe otrod'e!" growled the Cossack. _"You devil's spawn!"_

Think fast.

"Spi, dedushka," I said in Russian. _"Sleep, grandpa."_

Cossack opened the second pale eye in disbelief. His huge gray moustache twitched.

"Iz nashih shto-li?" he asked, straining to discern me closer. _"Are you one of ours then?"_

I stopped smiling and helped him rise up a little towards me. Let him see.

"Ish ty, tzygan," said the Cossack more mildly after considering my face for some time. "Sho v mundire-to vrazheskom razgulivaesh', hlopche?" _"Well now, a gypsy, eh... What are you running around in the enemy uniform for, laddie?"_

"Holodno," I said, feverishly racking my brains for useful Russian vocabulary. _"It's cold."_

"Voz'mi moyu shinel', ottaesh'. I Man'ku beri. Ona loshadka horoshaya, ne norovistaya... puzhlivaya tol'ko malost'." _"Take my overcoat, you'll thaw out. And take Manka. She's a good horse, not bad-tempered... just a bit scaredy."_

The man smiled and closed his eyes. His neck tendons grew slack in my hand. I lowered the dead man gently to the ground and drew a shaky breath. I felt like an utter blackguard, but what choice did I have? A la guerre comme a la guerre.

"..._Wronging poor people_..." mewled the infuriating female voice again. I clapped both of my hands over my ears.

"I'm not listening to you!" I hissed. "Go haunt someone else!"

/Sashuta, there's no one here but you and me. Eugene has gone downstairs to talk to your apprehended fellow, we're alone. Calm down, sssh.../

A large warm palm came up to stroke my head. I heard soft keening and realized that it was coming from my mouth.

/The candle is out. I've shuttered the windows. There's water when you're ready. Everything is going to be fine./

No, it's not. It's not going to be fine. I will wake up and you won't be there.

/Sure I will./

A heavy weight sunk onto the bed beside me. The hand left my brow; there was wet, resonant coughing and then the hand returned, only this time I was stroked with the back of the hand and not the palm.

/I'll be right here when you come back. Just keep counting for me./

Sechs. Fuenf. Vier.


	6. Prostration

Fear. My temporary reprieve was up - the wave was rising again.

_What the hell are you doing here? _it asked. _Why did you leave home?_

… …!

Every hair on my body was standing on end.

_Why did you obey him?_

…? …! …!

_Well, welcome to the Valley of Death, soldier boy! They've got a warm place for you where you're going._

In times like these, fear does not simply niggle at you from the back of your skull or even shout at you from the frontal lobes. It becomes you. It appropriates your nerves for its own ends and takes full charge of your nervous system, moving inwards from your fingertips to the spinal column. Your muscles get frightened before your mind can catch up and realize that it's about to send the body into a trap.

The only remedy that I had at my disposal against natural impulses of self-preservation was a trick I had taught myself a couple of months earlier, after a particularly bloody skirmish left one of my closest comrades without an arm (and within several hours feverish, and within several days dead).

_You still have time. Turn around! Turn around before they spot you!_

/Calm down, sssh, calm down, lay – lay back down.../

I discovered that the key to conserving both your honor and your sanity lies in self-automatization. A divorce of thought from action is needed. If one simply removes the brain from its command center, fear will have nowhere to turn for exercising control. The muscles may become frightened before the brain, but they cannot execute a roundabout without its sanction. Switch it off, and suddenly your frightened body no longer longs to make a dash for the relative safety of the trees, because it no longer perceives trees or understands safety. All you are left with is a hunk of ice in place of a stomach and slight tremors in the knees and fingers, and that can be overcome if one simply picks up some moving speed.

_That little guy looks far more formidable up close than he did from a hundred feet away, eh? Look at that bayonet! It's so long and shiny and poised perfectly to sink into your belly…_

/It'll be fine, Sasha, it's just me, and this is going to be over soon, I promise./

The metaphor that has always aided me in rescuing my mind from this pernicious influence was that of a smith of Herculean proportions hammering away at an anvil. Even now as I ride the Cossack's horse towards the group of three Russians armed with sharp bayonets, my useless rifle discarded, I imagine becoming that smith and lifting the enormous hammer above the anvil to bring it downwith all my superhuman might upon a red-hot horseshoe – once, twice, thrice, in rhythm with the blood pounding in my ears. When my arms begin to ache with the weight of the hammer and the resistance of the iron scrap, and as the smoke-veiled silhouettes grow sharper and sharper, I take a deep stomach breath and let my Self slide down my arms and into the hammer.

The fear leaves me along with the sense of Personhood.

/Is he choking?

/No, his airway is clear. I don't even know what's going on anymore. Hold him while I get a towel./

"_Zdorovo, rebyata!" _I roar to my three hapless horseshoes, barely hearing my own voice over the explosions.

They see the fur-lined Cossack overcoat on my shoulders and lower their weapons all the way to the ground. Points down. The one in a brown cap screams something in reply, waving his arm in the direction of the bombs and bullets.

I rise in time with the beating of my heart and surge downwards. The horseshoe folds under the force of my stroke, headless. The other two barely register the blood pouring by the bucketful out of their mate before my next fall catches the lad, who grabs reflexively the reins of the horse

/Hold his right arm, hold his arm, he might hurt himself/

and I roll off onto my third horseshoe, who tightens his grip around the rifle impotently, his arm broken below the elbow by my knee. The hatred in his eyes could burn up a man, but there are no men here. There is a hammer and now three broken horseshoes, the last one with head lolling to the side at an unnatural angle.

I stand up, trying to calm the tremors in my legs, and collapse against the cannon, retching. It's over. I did it. The cannon is ours. Let Captain Mont St. Jean choke on it.

I hear the whistle of the low-flying mortar and dive, swearing to myself that I will never again…

The world turns red and dissipates in a colossal shower of needle-sharp metal sparks.


End file.
